I deleted a duplicate email but left the original in Thunderbird. The next time I downloaded emails from the server, the email that was a duplicate on Thunderbird was deleted from the server. Why?
I deleted a duplicate email but left the original in Thunderbird. The next time I downloaded emails from the server, the email that was a duplicate on Thunderbird was deleted from the server. Why?
I have Thunderbird setup to leave the emails on the server until I delete them. However, I only deleted a duplicate of an email. Should this have happened? If so, how can I avoid it if I want to clean up duplicate emails on Thunderbird? My mail server is a POP server, if that's important. And I'm using the Remove Duplicates addon
All Replies (2)
In the case of IMAP mail everything is syncronised. So if you delete mail from Thunderbird, it is deleted from the server. Delete it on the server and it is deleted in Thunderbird. Add the mail account to your phone and delete it there and it will be deleted from the server and Thunderbird as well.
If you want to unlink Thunderbird and a POP server you will need to ensure the server retention in account setting is not "until I delete it" The server, nor Thunderbird see duplicates. Only mail ids that you are deleting.
Matt said
In the case of IMAP mail everything is syncronised. So if you delete mail from Thunderbird, it is deleted from the server. Delete it on the server and it is deleted in Thunderbird. Add the mail account to your phone and delete it there and it will be deleted from the server and Thunderbird as well. If you want to unlink Thunderbird and a POP server you will need to ensure the server retention in account setting is not "until I delete it" The server, nor Thunderbird see duplicates. Only mail ids that you are deleting.
Matt, thanks for answering. My ISP has POP3 servers, so your remarks about IMAP are not relevant for my situation.
I have 2 computers (a desktop and a laptop, although the types of computers is not germane). So I have to have the "until I delete it" setting turned on, or the emails would be deleted from the server after I downloaded them to either computer. I suppose that I could use the "Leave messages on computer for at most xx days" option in order to allow me to access,say the last 2 month's emails from my phone, but my ISP also has a web mail feature, so I can also access my emails from a public computer when I'm away from either of my computers.
Other than deleting unwanted emails on either of my computers(resulting in them being deleted from the server), I will occasionally perform cleanup of the servers by signing onto the web mail feature and deleting all emails older than a certain date.
This still leaves the cleanup of duplicate emails that accrue on Thunderbird due to things like mail downloads that get interrupted or don't complete normally due to server or internet issues. When this happens, the duplicates only exist on Thunderbird. There are no duplicates on the server. But based on the scenario that I described in my original post, if I have duplicates of emails on Thunderbird on either of my computers, when I clean up the duplicate copies on Thunderbird, it looks like the original email on the server will also be deleted. If it's older than the "Leave messages on computer for at most xx days" setting, that's not a problem. But if it's only a week old, then that's going to mess up my plan of keeping emails on the server newer than the number of days listed in the above option.
So do you see that Thunderbird's action of deleting the original email from the server when all I have done is delete an extra copy of an email from Thunderbird creates a problem? I don't understand your comment about the server detecting duplicates that exist only on Thunderbird and not on the server.